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Political Prisoners Abused in Liaoning Province China

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Political Prisoners Abused in Liaoning Province China September 1, 1992 Volume 4, Issue No. 23 China: Political Prisoners Abused in Liaoning ProvinProvincece as Official Whitewash of Labor Reform System Continues The Chinese government, in an on-going public relations campaign, is attempting to portray China's vast labor reform system as, first and foremost, a humane method for turning criminals into model citizens through industrial production1. The output, officials repeatedly claim, is negligible, targeted primarily to the needs of the prison system itself and only incidentally to other sectors of the domestic economy. In three previous reports,2 Asia Watch has discredited the government's insistence that prison-made labor products are not for export. And Asia Watch and other human rights monitoring organizations have repeatedly exposed the appalling conditions in the vast Chinese gulag.3 1 White Paper on Criminal Reform in China, Information Office of the State Council, August 11, 1992. 2 Asia Watch, "Prison Labor in China," News from Asia Watch, vol. 3, no. 11; "Forced Labor Exports from China: Update No. 1, News from Asia Watch, vol. 3, no. 19; "Forced Labor Exports from China: Update No. 2," News from Asia Watch, vol. 3, no. 25. 3 See for example, Asia Watch, Anthems of Defeat: Crackdown in Hunan Province (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992); Asia Watch, Now, two documents (Appendix I and Appendix II),4 obtained by Asia Watch, graphically illustrate the gulf between the government's whitewash and inmates' accounts of conditions in Chinese labor camps. And other new information (Appendix V) further discredits the Chinese government's claim that prison- made products are not for export. All materials refer to the vast Lingyuan Labor Reform complex, which is located in an ethnic Mongol enclave in the remote western portion of the northeastern coastal province of Liaoning and is known to the outside world as "Lingyuan Motor Vehicle Industrial Corporation of Liaoning Province." One document, the authenticity of which Asia Watch has independently confirmed, is a recent account by a group of political prisoners of the torture and deprivation they endured from the time they arrived in Lingyuan until July 1992 when the document was smuggled out. Another document, an official version, is a glowing history of the development of Lingyuan as a prison-production complex. It was written by a chief of the Second Department of the Lingyuan Labor Reform Sub-Bureau of Liaoning Province which administers the facility. The article, which appeared in a 1992 neibu (restricted circulation) journal, Fanzui Yu Gaizao Yanjiu (Researches in Crime and Reform) makes perfectly clear that Lingyuan is one vast penal colony whose production is vital to China's automotive industry and to its overall industrial development. Many political prisoners from the 1989 pro-democracy movement are currently held at Lingyuan. The best-known of these is probably Liu Gang, a close colleague and collaborator of Wang Juntao and Chen Ziming, who are now both serving 13-year prison sentences for their alleged roles as the "black hands" behind the 1989 pro-democracy movement. So impressed have the authorities been with Lingyuan's contribution to the overall suppression of the 1989 movement, that on October 17, 1990 the Ministry of Justice awarded the Lingyuan Labor Reform Sub-Bureau the designation of "Outstanding Collective in Curbing the Turmoil and Suppressing the Counterrevolutionary Rebellion." The official account "Yao Yongzhan: A Year in a Chinese Prison," News from Asia Watch, vol. 2, no. 14; Asia Watch and Tibet Information Network, Political Prisoners in Tibet (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1992). 4 Appendix IV adds detail to the information about Liu Gang in Appendix I. According to the official version, Lingyuan penal colony, since its inception in 1958, has "successfully reformed historical counterrevolutionaries, Guomingdang war criminals, secret agents sent by the United States and the Jiang (Chiang Kai-shek) clique, female prisoners, those sentenced to be re-educated through labor, and large numbers of common criminals of all categories." It now houses six labor reform detachments spread over 3.3 million square meters. As a "key enterprise" of Liaoning Province and an important component of China's national motor vehicle development plan, it manufactures trucks and tractor-trailers and their component parts including engines, oil pumps and caterpillar treads. There are 160,000 square meters of factory floor space and fixed assets, including an asbestos mine, rail lines and manufacturing equipment worth some 147,070,000 yuan ($24,511,667). There is no way of knowing how many prisoners and ex-prisoners5 currently work in the complex, but the official version makes clear that starting in 1958, some "45,000 prisoners and ex-prisoners undergoing reform or re-education through labor6 or employed in different units, began the pioneering work of building a new city...." Extensive growth is implied by reference to: ten county level units with their own nurseries, kindergartens, primary and middle schools, a police academy, TV university, a motor vehicle research institute, department stores, bath houses, hospitals, liquefied petroleum gas stations, cinemas, hostels, a TV station... More chilling is the description of the system in place to control prison workers: As regards the reform of prisoners, the control and supervision facilities have gone from simple and crude to the sophisticated. Education has become more penetrating. Tall prison buildings have replaced the tents and single-storied buildings. High walls, live wire entanglements, watch towers and electrically operated iron gates have replaced the straw ropes and barbed wires. The various detachments have acquired prison vans, police cars, motorcycles, walkie talkies and alarm systems. Some detachments have installed monitoring devices. The procedures and measures of control and supervision have been perfected all the way from detention to release. What is markedly clear is the contrast between the official version of the methods used in the "successful reform of tens of thousands of convicts" and the prisoner's own account. The official version allows a prisoner to "accumulate credits to improve his situation" and features vocational and technical training schools and recreational activities such as "calligraphy and painting exhibitions, intelligence and athletic competitions...literary groups...Spring Festival yangge dances." The prisoners' account is a chilling tale of beatings by policeman and common criminals, foul living conditions, torture, degradation 5 It is common practice in China to forcibly and indefinitely retain prisoners who have completed their sentences (Asia Watch, "Prison Labor in China," News from Asia Watch, vol. 3, no. 11, pp. 2-3. 6 Re-education through labor is an administratively imposed sentence of no more than three years' duration, which may be arbitrarily extended for a fourth year. A Re-education Through Labor Management Committee, composed of cadres from several organizations is supposed to impose the sentence. In reality, the committee is dominated by the Public Security Bureau. The prisoner never comes before judicial authorities nor is he permitted benefit of counsel. Asia Watch 333 September 1, 1992 and daily deprivation. The prisoners' account In April 1991, eleven political prisoners, all participants in the April-May 1989 pro-democracy movement in China, arrived at Lingyuan No.2 Labor Reform Detachment, known euphemistically as Lingyuan Motor Vehicle General Assembly Plant, in Liaoning Province in China's northeast. Among the group were workers, students and intellectuals. For some, torture began the moment they stepped out of the prison van. For some it was continuous for months on end. Joined by other political inmates, members of the group went on hunger strike in November 1991, the week before then Secretary of State James Baker went to Beijing, to call attention to their appalling condition and to demand that the policies outlined in China's human rights white paper7 be implemented within the brigade. An earlier prisoners' document, Urgent Appeal: Please Have Concern for the Dissidents in Lingyuan Prison, reported the abuses, psychological and physical pressure to change political views, beatings and torture, fourteen-hour workdays, tiny punishment cells, isolation, insufficient rations. Prison authorities declared the strike "an act of resisting reform and even a prison uprising." Requests by the men's relatives for information went unanswered; and the strike was forcibly ended by prison authorities.8 The new document provides additional details about conditions prior to the strike, the strike itself and its brutal aftermath. A second hunger strike, beginning on New Year's Day 1992 to demand that prisoners be permitted to see their families, was equally forcefully put down with beatings, torture and isolation. The police commander even told one prisoner: It is my duty to beat you. It is for your reform. So you want to stage a hunger strike? Go ahead. Labor reform detachments aren't afraid of deaths! When one does, we'll bury one. When two die, we'll bury a pair. Three of the eleven prisoners sent to Lingyuan in April 1991 came from Beijing prisons, Liu Gang, Zhang Ming and Kong Xianfeng.9 Liu, a physics graduate, and Zhang, an automotive engineering student at Qinghua University, were both on the Chinese government's "wanted list" of 21 Beijing student leaders. They were sentenced in January and February 1991
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